Serendipity

The other day I was chatting with my virtual cousin, Harper Beresford; besides gossiping about family (you would not believe what Uncle Mortimer has been doing!), she shared that she was going to be working on SL7B (and, in case you don’t know, it’s Second Life’s 7th birthday celebration.)  I was happy for her, of course, but then she told me the title of this year’s celebration is Unexpected Collaborations.   Now, if I’m being entirely honest, my first response was to stifle a giggle, but the more I thought about the idea of unexpected collaborations and Second Life, the more I liked it.

Serendipity has long been one of my favorite words.  If you aren’t familiar with it, serendipity means making fortunate discoveries by accident.  As I reflect on my second life, it has been filled with it.  For starters, I can’t begin to tell you how many of my dearest friends in Second Life I met entirely by chance.  But more than just chance encounters, much of my second life has been about exploring in all senses of the word and being open to seeing where serendipity and chance might lead.   This has lead me down some blind alleys and a few painful errors, but more often than not has resulted in something positive that I could not have predicted.  Since SL is both a social and creative space, I hardly think I’m alone in my experience and in my approach to our virtual world.

Following a string of events that have raised the question of how much Linden Lab understands how Residents relate to Second Life, I was happy to see the official SL7B theme as a positive sign.   So, for the first time, I find myself thinking of trying to see if I could do something for this birthday celebration on unexpected collaborations.  Since I’m not much of a prim masher, I’m trying to figure out what that might look like.  So, how about it, dear readers, do you have any ideas that would celebrate unexpected collaborations?   And would any of you like to collaborate?

How not to suck, if you can swallow it.

Okay, I’ll admit it, the idea for my recent posts about events in Second Life started as a rant.  For the longest time, I’ve been frustrated that gems of events get lost among a sea of…well, let’s just say things that turn out not to even be events.  After writing the first one, I wanted to write a blistering rant that went off on all of the things that people do when creating events that contribute to the dreck.  The more I played with drafts of this post, the more I realized that the classic comic character Pogo had it right: ” We have met the enemy and he is us.”  If we can all be thoughtful about what events we choose to participate in or how we  approach planning events, the more likely that we are to see fewer bad events.  So instead of a rant, I’ve decided to write about what makes a good event and some ways to find them.

I’ve come to believe that there are three important factors that contribute to good events in Second Life.  They are:

• Quality of content;
• Opportunity for interaction; and
• Thoughtful planning.

Want to know more?  Curious about what makes a good event?  Tune in after the jump for more details with a few examples!

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for!

One of my favorite things about Second Life is that something is always happening.  I’ve always had moments where I’m afraid I’ll something, so I found myself being reluctant to log-off when I first came to SL for fear that an even better event was going to start.   I’ve certainly overcome that feeling in SL even though there is still no shortage of events   Sure, it is easy to find something to do, but finding something good to do?  It can be too damn hard sometimes.

I’m even going to start with a moment of immodesty.  I’m pretty confident that I am more familiar with ways to find events in SL than the majority of residents from having  covered events for New World Notes for much of last year.   Through that experience, I came to believe that finding good events in SL is a little like shopping at T.J. Maxx (a.k.a T.K Maxx for my European friends!) only nowhere near as satisfying.  In both instances, you have to wade through piles of things to find just what you want but you feel excited if you find a bargain on something you love while shopping and are just plain annoyed at having to work so hard to find an event.

There are a couple of reasons why finding an event can be so challenging and I’ve broken them up into two posts.  The first post talks about structural problems and the second highlights cultural issues with having good events.  Curious about the structural problems?  Read on after the jump to find out!